Archive for October, 2012

GodMode is actually a hidden (or, at least it used to be hidden) developer shortcut in Windows 8/7 that provides more direct access to features and functions of the operating system. To be clear, GodMode doesn’t add functionality. But it helps administrators work more efficiently by collecting all these tweaks and controls in one place.

To access the special capabilities of the GodMode folder, create a new folder anywhere on your Windows 8/7 computer and name it:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Once renamed, the icon will change to a control panel looking icon, and when opened you will be presented with a plethora of different tweaking options.

On my Windows 7 Professional machine, I was shown nearly 50 sections with quick links to configuration options. I find placing this GodMode icon in my desktop very helpful. Whenever I need to open options like network and sharing,printers etc, it makes it very easy to find all this icons placed inside one icon rather than going for the control panel.

Most of us have experienced a situation where in we need to gain access to a computer which is password protected or at times we may forget the administrator password without which it becomes impossible to login to the computer. So here is an excellent hack.

In this tutorial we’ll show you how to hack Windows administrator password on Windows 8/7/Vista/XP. The only requirement for this is that you need to find an alternative computer to create a password hacking Live CD. Here is a step-by-step instruction to hack Windows administrator password.

Click here to download the Reset Windows Password software. Once the download is complete, unzip the download file and you’ll find the CD ISO image: ResetWindowsPwd.iso.

Burn the ISO image to an empty CD using any CD/DVD recording software such as BurnCDCC or ISO2Disc.

Place the Live CD you’ve created in the CD drive of your computer with the administrator password you want to hack. Head into the computer BIOS and set your computer to boot from CD.

From the main window of Reset Windows Password program, you could see the Windows SAM registry file and user accounts inside the SAM file.

Choose the administrator account, and then click on the Reset Password button. It will blank your forgotten/unknown password instantly.

Now remove the password hacking Lice CD and restart the computer. You can then log in to the administrator account with a blank password. This hack works even if you forgot the administrator password and can’t log in to Windows.

As a system/network administrator, you should have faced this problem. When logging on to a Windows machine the user may get the error message like “The user profile service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded” in Windows 7 or Vista. Once enter the user name and password it will give this error message and the user can’t login but other user can login to the system without any problem.

In this tutorial we’ll show you how to fix your user profile so you can log in to Windows without receiving the error message mentioned above.

How to Fix the “The user profile service failed the logon” error?

This solution includes renaming of the registry keys which contain the profile information, so you need to have administrative privileges to make changes with Windows Registry. You can choose to log in to Windows with another administrator account or boot into Safe Mode. Then follow these steps:

Click Start, type regedit in the Run box. Press Enter key.

In Registry Editor, navigate to the location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

In the navigation pane, locate the folder that begins with S-1-5 (SID key) followed by a long number.

Click each S-1-5 folder, locate the ProfileImagePath entry in the details pane, and then double-click to make sure that this is the user account profile that has the error.

Option 1: If you have only one folder starting with S-1-5 that is followed by long numbers and ends with .bak. Right-click the folder, and then click Rename. Remove .bak at the end of the folder name, and then press Enter.

Option 2: If you have two folders starting with S-1-5 followed by some long numbers and one of them ended with .bak, you have to rename the .bak folder. To do this, follow these steps:

1) Right-click the folder without .bak, and then click Rename. Type .ba, and then press Enter.
2) Right-click the folder that is named .bak, and then click Rename. Remove .bak at the end of the folder name, and then press Enter.
3) Right-click the folder that is named .ba, and then click Rename. Change the .ba to .bak at the end of the folder name, and then press Enter.

Double-click the folder without .bak in the details pane, double-click RefCount, type 0, and then click OK.

Click the folder without .bak, in the details pane, double-click State, type 0, and then click OK.

Close Registry Editor.

Restart the computer and try to log on again with your account to see if the problem still exists. If everything goes as planned, you will be able to login to your account without any issue.

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If you have lost and forgotten login password of your Windows computer, but you can still log in to the system when automatic logon is enabled, then there are two ways you can recover Windows login password.

The first option is to use Ophcrack. This is a Windows password cracking tool that reads the NT/LM hashed (encrypted) copies of the passwords from the system, and then uses dictionary and/or brute force methods to find the password that matches the hash. The stronger the password (the longer it is, whether it uses random letters and numbers or words and names) the longer this will take.

The second option is to use Reset Windows Password utility. If you have lost the administrator password and are unable to log in to the computer at all then you must reset the password to something known. This is achieved by booting the computer from a bootable CD/USB and remove the login password as blank. Here are detailed steps:

How to Recover Windows Login Password?

1. Download the zip archive of Reset Windows Password utility to an alternative computer. Once you download the zip file, just unzip it and burn the ResetWindowsPwd.iso file to a blank CD or USB flash drive using ISO2Disc.

2. Insert the bootable CD/USB drive into the target computer with a forgotten administrator password. Power on the computer and set it to boot from CD or USB, not your local hard drive.

3. Shortly after loading the operating system inside the CD/USB drive, it will launch the Reset Windows Password program. You’ll see the Windows SAM registry hive and a list of Windows user accounts which are detected by the program.

4. Choose a user account and then click on Reset Password button, it will remove your Windows login password immediately.

5. Remove the bootable CD or USB drive. Restart the computer and you can then log in to Windows with a blank password.

For most Windows users, forgetting the password to an administrator account can be devastating. Hacking your way into the computer is not always easy and trying to remember the password may not do you any good either. Luckily there is a powerful recovery software which allows you to bypass Windows 7/Vista/XP admin password in minutes.

With Reset Windows Password utility you can bypass Windows admin password through booting your computer from a CD or USB drive. Quickly regain access to your locked computer when you forgot the administrator password. This method is a very simple one. You just need to download the software on an alternative computer, and create a bootable CD or USB drive. So you can then use it to boot your computer and remove the forgotten admin password easily.

How to Bypass Windows 7/Vista/XP Admin Password?

Download the zip archive of Reset Windows Password utility to an alternative computer. Once you download the zip file, just unzip it and burn the ResetWindowsPwd.iso file to a blank CD or USB flash drive using ISO2Disc.

Insert the bootable CD/USB drive into the target computer with a forgotten administrator password. Power on the computer and set it to boot from CD or USB, not your local hard drive.

Shortly after loading the operating system inside the CD/USB drive, it will launch the Reset Windows Password program. You’ll see the Windows SAM registry hive and a list of Windows user accounts which are detected by the program.

Choose the administrator account and then click on Reset Password button, it will remove your Windows administrator password immediately.

Remove the bootable CD or USB drive. Restart the computer and you can then log in to your administrator account with a blank password.

With Reset Windows Password utility you can also unlock any locked-out or disabled Windows accounts, and bypass domain administrator passwords on a domain controller. I think, this would be the perfect password recovery tool for both home and business users alike.

It is always possible to forget the password you set while installing the BitLocker on your drive. In such a situation you should take out the Recovery Key file or the printed recovery key in front of you from where you have placed. With the Recovery Key you can easily unlock the encrypted drive and remove / change the BitLocker password. In this tutorial we’ll go through the steps of unlocking BitLocker encrypted drive using the recovery key.

How to Unlock BitLocker Encrypted Drive Using the Recovery Key?

Insert the BitLocker encrypted drive in the Windows system, you will immediately be prompted to enter the BitLocker password.

The recovery key was created when BitLocker was first setup. The recovery key might have been saved or printed. Here is the recovery key I saved on my computer.

Copy your BitLocker Recovery Key and paste it into the input box below.

Once the Recovery Key has been accepted, you’ll be granted temporary access to your drive.

Click on Manage BitLocker link, this will provide you with a list of options that you can use to remove or change your BitLocker password.

A BitLocker recovery key is the only option to unlock your encrypted drive in case you forgot the BitLocker password. Without the recovery key you’ll permanently lost access to all the data on your encrypted drive.

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Losing a USB flash drive can be the stuff of nightmares if it contains sensitive or valuable information. If your computer is running the Ultimate or Enterprise edition of Windows 8/7/Vista, you can use Microsoft’s included BitLocker To Go feature to encrypt your entire USB drive.

BitLocker To Go allows you to encrypt the data stored on a USB drive and restrict access with a password. Without the password, the USB drive is worthless. When you connect the encrypted USB drive to a Windows computer, you are prompted for the password, and upon entering it you can read and write to the drive as you normally would.

In this article I will walk through the steps of securing a USB drive (thumb drive) with Bitlocker To Go in Windows 7.

How to Secure USB Drive with BitLocker To Go?

Connect the USB drive for which you want to enable BitLocker Encryption.

Click Start, then click Control Panel. Click System and Security.

Click BitLocker Drive Encryption. This screen presents a list of all the drive partitions and the connected USB drives which could be protected with BitLocker To Go.

Click the Turn On BitLocker link option near your USB drive. It starts the initialization process of BitLocker Drive Encryption.

Once the initialization process is complete, BitLocker To Go will prompt you to set up a password that you will use to unlock the drive. If you have a smart card, you can use its PIN to unlock the drive.

After you set up a password or use a smart card, BitLocker To Go will prompt you to store a recovery key. You can use the recovery key to unlock your drive in the event that you forget the password or lose your smart card.

When you create the password and save your recovery key, you’ll be prompted to begin the encryption process.

Click on Start Encrypting button. The amount of time that it will take to complete the process will depend on how large the drive is.

When the encryption is complete, you’ll notice that the drive icon shows a lock on the drive.

The next time you plug in the USB drive to a Windows machine you will be prompted to enter the password to gain access to the drive.

In future, any file you save on that drive will be encrypted automatically.

If you’re about to start using a new computer, you might be concerned about migrating your old computer data. All the easy stuff transfers just fine, but then you realize that Outlook or Thunderbird need to get moved over. Getting the email client data files moved across machines is fairly simple, but then the tricky part hits you. How to transfer the email passwords saved in your email client if you have no clue what the password is?

There are many backup utilities that allows you to migrate email account settings and mail messages, but none of them have the ability of moving the stored email passwords. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to retrieve email passwords from all most popular email clients, so you can backup the passwords and then configure them in your new computer.

It will bring up a drop-down menu that shows all supported password recovery features.

Move your cursor to the Email Passwords option, you can see a list of email clients that the program could retrieve the saved email passwords from.

Choose your email client option, the program will display all available account details: email account, password, POP3 and SMTP servers.

You can manually copy out your account details and save them to a text file.

The program is super simple to use and it comes in handy for the situation where you just can’t remember your email account password when migrating your Outlook or other email client settings to a new computer.

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Windows 7 includes a new feature called Windows Vault, which is actually a new name for Stored User Names and Passwords in Windows Vista/XP. Whenever you access a file share on another machine, map a drive to a remote server, or connect to a Windows domain, you will be prompted to provide a username and password as shown below.

If you select the “Remember my credentials” checkbox, it will store the credentials in Windows Vault. Next time, when you connect to the same resource, your saved credentials will be used automatically, and you will not be prompted for credentials. This can be a great time-saving feature if you need to access the same resource frequently.

In this tutorial we’ll show you how to backup and restore the save passwords in Windows Vault. You can access the Windows Vault through the Credential Manager. The easiest way is by just typing “Credential Manager” in the Windows 7 Start Menu search prompt. You can also access the Credential Manager through the Control Panel.

How to Backup Saved Passwords in Windows Vault?

Click on the Back up vault link in the Credential Manager. This will bring up the Stored User Names and Passwords wizard.

Forgot Windows administrator password? This might bring a lot of irritating and time consuming consequences. Even if you can still log on your computer with a limited account, you don’t have full right to remove or change administrator password. So the only option is to do it from a boot CD/USB.

With Reset Windows Password utility you are able to remove Windows administrator password without knowing the original one for your Windows 8/7/Vista/XP system. This utility works by making a bootable CD or USB drive. After booting from the CD/USB drive, this utility gains full access to the Windows SAM (Security Accounts Manager) file where all Windows passwords are stored, and enables you to easily remove the password associated with your administrator account.

How to Remove Windows Administrator Password?

Download the zip archive of Reset Windows Password utility to an alternative computer. Once you download the zip file, just unzip it and burn the ResetWindowsPwd.iso file to a blank CD or USB flash drive using ISO2Disc.

Insert the bootable CD/USB drive into the target computer with a forgotten administrator password. Power on the computer and set it to boot from CD or USB, not your local hard drive.

Shortly after loading the operating system inside the CD/USB drive, it will launch the Reset Windows Password program. You’ll see the Windows SAM registry hive and a list of Windows user accounts which are detected by the program.

Choose the administrator account and then click on Reset Password button, it will remove your Windows administrator password immediately.

Remove the bootable CD or USB drive. Restart the computer and you can then log in to your administrator account with a blank password.

Reset Windows Password utility can be used to as a great relief if you are usually confronted with the problem of forgetting Windows password. Follow this simple guide you can remove Windows administrator password on almost all versions of Windows system.